Nothing plays on that little violin inside my heart more than hearing some child-sodomizing fugitive has got himself a case of the incarceration blues:
Director Roman Polanski is feeling depressed two weeks after his arrest in Switzerland to face U.S. extradition for a 1977 case involving the rape of a 13-year-old girl, his lawyer was quoted as saying on Sunday.“I found him to be tired and depressed,” Herve Temime told the Sonntag newspaper, one of two newspapers he talked to after visiting the Oscar-winning director in a Zurich prison.
“Roman Polanski, who is 76, seemed very dejected when I visited him,” Temime told another newspaper, NZZ am Sonntag.
“Polanski was in an unsettled state of mind.”
“Dejected,” “unsettled,” “depressed.” About 1/1000th of what his victim went through. Michael Cieply’s New York Times piece over the weekend probably didn’t do the fugitive director’s mood much good. Cieply makes a very convincing case that had Polanski taken his medicine in 1977, he would have received a lighter sentence than what he’s likely to face today if extradited:
Manners, mores and law enforcement have become far less forgiving of sex crimes involving minors in the 31 years since Mr. Polanski was charged with both rape and sodomy involving drugs. He fled rather than face what was to have been a 48-day sentence after he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor.But if he is extradited from Switzerland, Mr. Polanski could face a more severe punishment than he did in the 1970s, as a vigorous victims’ rights movement, a family-values revival and revelations of child abuse by clergy members have all helped change the moral and legal framework regarding sex with the young.
Mr. Polanski’s lawyers — including Reid Weingarten, a Washington power player — are likely to argue that Mr. Polanski does not even qualify for extradition from Switzerland, because he was set to be given a jail term of less than one year when he fled to France in 1978.
But Stephen L. Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, has signaled that he believes much stiffer penalties may be in order. Questioned by reporters just after Mr. Polanski’s arrest, he said the filmmaker had received a “very, very, very lenient sentence” that “would never be achievable under today’s laws.”
Talk about poetic justice.
There must also be some legal penalty for fleeing the country that will add to Polanski’s jail time; something that will give Leftist Hollywood a whole new cause to make fools of themselves over. After all, artistes should be allowed to pick up and run if they’re about to go to jail … especially child rapists, right?
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